Chapter 4 - The Husband's Other Marriage
Evelyn didn't remember driving home.
She remembered the rain.
She remembered stopping at a red light and realizing she had been holding her breath.
And she remembered the words on that page.
Get rid of her.
By the time she reached her parents' house, she had convinced herself there had to be another explanation.
Perhaps Dominic had been talking about removing her from a business arrangement.
Perhaps the letter was incomplete.
Perhaps someone had forged it.
She needed to hear his voice.
She called him.
He answered immediately.
“Where are you?”
“At my parents' house.”
“You've been avoiding my calls.”
“I've been thinking.”
“Come home. We can fix this.”
Evelyn almost laughed.
“Can we?”
“Yes.”
“Did you transfer my company to Mercer Holdings?”
Silence.
Then Dominic said, “Who told you that?”
“Answer the question.”
“It was a business restructuring.”
“You told me it was temporary.”
“It was complicated.”
“You paid Vanessa from my company's accounts.”
Another silence.
This one lasted longer.
“Evelyn, you don't understand what you're looking at.”
“Then explain it.”
“Not over the phone.”
“Of course not.”
“Come home.”
“No.”
His voice hardened.
“I'm not asking.”
Evelyn looked through the kitchen window.
Her father was sitting on the back porch, watching the rain.
For the first time, Dominic's threats didn't make her feel small.
“You don't get to give me orders anymore.”
She ended the call.
Twenty minutes later, someone knocked.
Thomas opened the front door.
Two men in dark suits stood on the porch.
Neither looked particularly pleased.
“Mr. Mercer would like his wife to come home.”
Thomas folded his arms.
“She said no.”
“Sir, this is a private family matter.”
“Then you should have left it private.”
One of the men shifted.
Thomas stepped forward.
“My daughter is not going anywhere.”
The men exchanged a look before leaving.
Evelyn watched from the hallway.
She had never been prouder of her father.
That evening, Daniel called with another discovery.
He had located an older corporate filing connected to Dominic's holding company.
It wasn't a marriage certificate.
It was something worse.
A financial declaration listing Vanessa Hale as Dominic's domestic partner.
The document had been filed two years earlier.
Evelyn stared at the date.
Two years.
Long before the affair became obvious.
Long before Vanessa started appearing at private dinners.
Long before Dominic began telling Evelyn that he was sleeping downstairs because of work.
“Was it legally binding?” she asked.
“No,” Daniel replied. “But it was used to establish financial benefits and inheritance protections.”
“Why would he need that?”
“That's what we're trying to establish.”
Evelyn felt another piece of her marriage crumble.
Then she noticed the attached photograph.
Dominic and Vanessa were standing outside a courthouse.
Vanessa was holding a bouquet.
Dominic's hand rested against her back.
They looked like a married couple.
The photograph was dated eighteen months earlier.
Evelyn called Daniel again.
“Find out everything about this filing.”
“I already have someone looking into it.”
“Who?”
“An investigator named Rachel Dunn.”
The following afternoon, Rachel arrived at Evelyn's parents' house.
She was in her forties, with short brown hair and an expression that suggested very little surprised her anymore.
She placed a tablet on the kitchen table.
“Your husband has maintained several properties under different corporate names,” she explained. “One of them is a townhouse in Society Hill.”
Evelyn recognized the address.
She had once asked Dominic why he kept a property so close to the city when they already had the estate.
He had told her it was for business meetings.
Rachel tapped the screen.
“Vanessa has been living there for at least two years.”
Evelyn stared at the photographs.
A balcony.
A white kitchen.
A bedroom with floor-to-ceiling windows.
Then came a picture that made her stomach tighten.
Dominic was carrying a sleeping little girl through the front door.
The child looked about six years old.
“Who is she?” Evelyn whispered.
Rachel enlarged the photograph.
“Her name is Sophie Hale. She's Vanessa's daughter.”
Evelyn looked again.
The little girl had dark hair.
Dominic's dark hair.
And the same distinctive dimple in her left cheek.
“Is she his daughter?”
Rachel didn't answer immediately.
“We're waiting for the records.”
Evelyn stood and walked to the window.
She had spent seven years wondering why Dominic had never wanted children.
Every time she raised the subject, he had said the same thing.
His life was too dangerous.
He couldn't bring a child into his world.
They would try when things became safer.
But the world had never become safer.
And now there was a little girl in Vanessa's home, wearing a tiny silver bracelet engraved with the letter D.
Rachel placed another photograph on the table.
It showed Dominic at a children's hospital, standing beside Vanessa and Sophie.
The date was from four years earlier.
Before Evelyn's first anniversary.
Before Dominic had ever told her that he wasn't ready to be a father.
Evelyn pressed a hand against her mouth.
“Did he know?”
Rachel's expression softened.
“Mrs. Mercer, there's a DNA test in the file.”
Evelyn looked at her.
“And?”
Rachel turned the tablet around.
The result was clear.
Dominic Mercer was Sophie's biological father.
But as Evelyn stared at the report, she noticed a second document attached beneath it.
A birth registration.
Sophie hadn't been born four years earlier.
She had been born six months before Dominic married Evelyn.
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And the name listed as her legal guardian wasn't Vanessa Hale.
It was Dominic Mercer.
